Hooper Selection is a method of cursor movement and text selection for tablet devices, designed with the goal of making text editing more efficient. It consists of a set of gestures the user can make over the system keyboard to adjust the cursor or selection position. Its convenience stems from the fact that it allows the user to navigate around the text without having to move their hands away from the keyboard area or incur tap-and-hold delays when beginning a cursor drag action.

The idea was originally conceived by Georgia Tech student Daniel Hooper, and presented in a short video demo. The demo received widespread attention from the tech media, with responses generally being enthusiastic. A number of developers have since announced implementations of the concept in either their own apps, or system extensions that can be used on jailbroken devices (see Implementations).

In the original video posting, Hooper suggested that users who wanted the mechanism implemented in iOS should petition Apple by submitting feature requests through the company’s bug reporting website. The directions were removed once viewers began reporting their request was classified as a “Known issue”. To date, Apple has yet to comment on the suggestion.

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Cursor movement: To move the cursor, the user simply drags their finger across the keyboard in any direction. A one-finger drag moves the cursor slowly, and a two-finger drag moves the cursor faster, placing cursor at word boundaries.

Text selection: To select text, the user holds down the shift key while dragging across the keyboard in the same manner as above. As with cursor movement, the dragging speed depends on whether one or two fingers are used.

The video received an enthusiastic response, receiving coverage on many tech news sites including Cult of Mac [1] iDownloadBlog,[2] Forbes,[3] TechCrunch,[4] Macrumors,[5]Gizmodo,[6] Daring Fireball,[7] IT World,[8] Engadget,[9] The Verge,[10] and Business Insider.[11]